Mr. Sadanori Yagi enjoys a fulfilling life every day, while participating in regular luncheons at the Osaka Club, the oldest social club in Osaka. He worked for 42 years at Daikin Industries, Ltd., from which he retired as Managing Director. After leaving the company, he served as a part-time instructor at the Graduate School of Osaka Sangyo University.
n the days when he worked as a business person, Mr. Yagi vigorously pursued his career, taking advantage of foresight he gained at Kyoto University.
After graduating from the Faculty of Economics at Kyoto University in 1958, Mr. Yagi joined a wool trading company. In his third year at the company, although the textile industry was still flourishing, he questioned its future. One day he happened to see a newspaper job advertisement for Osaka Kinzoku Kogyo Co., Ltd., (today Daikin Industries, Ltd.). He applied for the position and was successful, so he started to work as a sales representative for commercial air conditioners. "I had very hard experience," said Mr. Yagi.
He was in charge of the industrial area in Amagasaki City. Every day he tried to sell air conditioners to factories without appointments or invitations, but was turned away at the door. He recalled that, "Generally there was no idea to air-condition factories at that time."
Despite such difficult conditions, he achieved steady sales results. At the age of 31, he was sent to a partner company in Taiwan on loan to provide local staff with sales advice. While riding a motorcycle for sales activities together with local sales personnel, Mr. Yagi also visited Japanese companies and obtained many orders. He was awarded a letter of thanks from the president of the partner company, and promoted to the position of sales planning section chief when he was 34 years old.

When Mr. Yagi was in high school, he listened to a lecture by Dr. Hideki Yukawa, which developed his interest in Kyoto University. He also found that many authors and translators of his favorite books were faculty members of Kyoto University. He then decided to go to the university.
"At the Uji campus where I studied in the first year, I was always studying as there was nothing else to do since it was in the countryside. But in my second year at the Yoshida campus, around which I faced many temptations, I neglected my studies a little," he said sheepishly. Even now, however, he can smoothly recite the titles of courses he took as well as the names of the professors and the lecture contents.
"Attending the course 'Principles of Economics' by Dr. Hideo Aoyama enabled me to take a bird's-eye view of the entire economic movement. Through the 'International Economics' course given by Dr. Kiyoshi Matsui, I leaned about the advantages of international transactions. Dr. Wasaburo Kimura's course 'Balance Sheet Theory' proved truly useful later when I worked as a business person."
In his days at Kyoto University, with a strong intellectual appetite, Mr. Yagi acquired extensive knowledge of the economy and foresight based on that knowledge. He said, "There is no doubt that these assets that I had cultivated at Kyoto University supported me in my business career."